Patrick
Radden Keefe (The Century Foundation) offers up a good overview of the pros and cons of Social Network Analytis in last Friday's (12 March 2006) edition of The New York Times. In “Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?” he says that “the N.S.A.
intercepts some 650 million communications worldwide every day.” Well, that's a nice round number, but one so large that we wonder how, for example, to account for basic variables such as the length of call? (You don't suppose the good folks at the N.S.A. have to wait while the “Please wait. A service technician will be with you shortly” messages are being replayed for 18 minutes, do we?)

We think Social Network Analysis is another of those tools in its infancy, but one with (a) great potential and (b) an equally great development curve.